What Adam Yauch meant to me

It’s rare that I cry when celebrities pass away: the day that both Sammy Davis Jr. and Jim Henson passed away (May 16, 1990); when I heard John Candy had died on March 4, 1994; and the day that John Ritter died (September 11, 2003 – btw, Johnny Cash died the next day) were a few of those rare instances. Those were celebrity deaths that made stop and wonder about the end of life and my mortality. But on Friday, May 4, 2012, when I heard Adam Yauch had passed away, I didn’t think about such morbid things.

This commentary is not meant to be an obituary. I didn’t know the man. It is well reported that he was a devoted Buddhist and tirelessly supported the Tibetan people in their battle for freedom against China. But that's not how his legacy will live on in me. It is about how Yauch effected how I listened to music.

Beastie Boys were not the best band in the world. They were not technically proficient enough to be considered great. They were not the biggest band in the world. Many more bands have the gold records and palatial homes. But for a span of about six years in the early to mid-1990s, Beastie Boys were the coolest band on the planet.

Last Friday, I blasted Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head, Ill Communication and Hello Nasty as loud as possible, summoning back incredible moments in my life that were scored by the music of the Beastie Boys:

I made it a habit of watching the Beastie Boys play during the month of May, around the time of my birthday. In 1992, for my twentieth birthday, I went to Toronto’s Concert Hall – which it’s now a CTV building at Yonge and Davenport – with Sheldon Street to see the Check Your Head show. Sheldon was a high school friend who put me on to rap music (and almost anything else that wasn't classic rock), and I remember listening to Check Your Head for the very first time at his house when the record came out in early1992.

Last Friday, I feigned stage diving off my couch like it was May of 1994 at Toronto’s defunct concert venue the Palladium on Toronto's Danforth Avenue, where I was one of a few hundred who scored seats to a secret, last-minute Ill Communication preview concert that was announced the morning the show. During that show, the security guy at the front of the stage was a huge knucklehead with whom I used to shoot pool at my college pub. I think his name was Richard. While I was crowd surfing, Richard waved me over to him, and when I got close enough, he gave me a boost onto the edge of the stage with the intention that I jump back into the crowd. But before I could do a stage dive, I turned around and found myself face to face with Adam Yauch. In mid rap, Yauch put his hand out for a hand shake. I shook it, then felt Richard grab me and throw me off the stage; I never got to stage dive. So I did it on Friday.

I recalled celebrating my twenty-third birthday – the first separated from my twin brother Andrew – at a Beastie Boys show at Verdun Auditorium in Montreal. The opening act, Bad Brains, had apparently fought back stage and were not going to play, so to compensate, the Beasties played for almost three hours. Very early on in the evening, I lost contact with my companion Eric San (no cellphones back then) and ended up watching the show with a mysterious, yet affectionate French girl. Three years later in August 1998, I got to watch Eric – by then known as DJ Kid Koala – opened up for the Beasties as a member of Beasties’ keyboardist Money Mark’s band at Molson Park in Barrie, Ontario.

Beasties were not just a band I listened to back in the day. They were the barometer for my musical taste and help me discover new music. When the Beasties played their own instruments, I saw them go from clumsy hardcore punk, to droning stoner rock, to smooth funk jams, and back again in a matter of minutes. And they knew where all that shit came from. I paid attention to many of the shout-outs in the Beasties’ rhymes and sought to find the recordings of soul legends Lee Dorsey, Jimmy Smith and Rufus Thomas. I wanted to know who they were sampling and listen to the original recordings from every genre and every era.

They were also highly respected in the rap music community. If it weren’t for Beastie Boys, (mostly) white suburban kids would have had to wait a few more years before hearing of Public Enemy, LL Cool J, A Tribe Called, De la Soul, the Pharcyde, the Roots and Busta Rhymes.

The same goes for those in other genres. Just ask the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Beck what playing with the Beasties did for their exposure. I remember listening to 1980s New York post-punk band called Liquid Liquid when they re-released some material on the Beasties’ Grand Royal record label in 1997.

So Adam Yauch, you deserve all the kind words that people will say about your activism, your warm heart and your loving soul. But I salute you for being that crazy-good bass player and raspy rapper who was part of the soundtrack to a time when I experienced much joy, anger, love, angst and beauty.